(27 January 2010 8:30 pm)

MUMBAI: The foray of YouTube into movie rental streaming featuring five independent films from last weekend's Sundance Film Festival have resulted in the exercise being termed a failure.

The titles, from the 2009 festival and also this year's edition, include The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention and Bass Ackwards are available as standard-definition and high-definition downloads for $3.99 each for a 48-hour viewing window.

Only 72-hours after launch, 1,422 viewers had totally paid $5,673.78 to rent the five titles including 303 views of The Cove, 301 of Children of Invention, 298 of Bass Ackwards, 279 of Homewrecker and 241 of One Too Many Mornings, according to MotleyFool.com analyst Rick Munarriz.

The analyst said that the social network behemoth is discovering the challenges Apple, Blockbuster and Amazon have encountered in attempting to deliver movie rental streams and compete with Netflix.
The online DVD rental pioneer, which claims that 50 per cent of its 11 million subscribers watch at least 15 minutes of streaming per month, offers streams of select catalog titles as a value-added feature to new and existing monthly subscribers.

Said Google spokesperson Chris Dale, "it would be a mistake to compare the performance of five independent films on YouTube to Hollywood blockbusters on opening weekend."

He said that of the 9,000 films submitted to Sundance in 2009, about 53 titles found some form of distribution. He said the initial focus of YouTube movie rental streams is the independent filmmaker who creates "amazing works" on a micro-budget without any assurance their project will be picked up and distributed.